ShebaKarim is the author of three novels: Skunk Girl, That Thing We Call a Heart and Mariam Sharma Hits the Road, and the editor of Alchemy: The Tranquebar Book of Erotic Short Stories 2. Her fourth young adult novel, The Marvelous Mirza Girls. is forthcoming from HarperCollins in 2020. She has an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop and is a Writer-in-Residence at Vanderbilt University.

Kristen Daniels studied creative writing at USC with T.C. Boyle and Aimee Bender, at UCLA Extension with Les Plesko, and at the Community of Writers at Squaw Valley. She lives in Encinitas, CA with her husband and two daughters.

Jaimee Wriston Colbert is the author of three novels and three story collections: Vanishing Acts, Wild Things, Shark Girls, Dream Lives of Butterflies, Climbing the God Tree and Sex, Salvation, and the Automobile. Her work has won the CNY 2017 Book Award in Fiction, Willa Cather Fiction Prize, Ian MacMillan Fiction Prize, IPPY Gold Medal, Isotope Fiction Prize, and the Jane’s Story Prize. She is Professor of Creative Writing at SUNY, Binghamton University.

Geetika Lizardi left a successful MBA career to pursue screenwriting. Her first feature, a biopic of Jane Austen, was optioned and later adapted for musical theater in the UK. Her first TV spec landed her a staff-writing job on NBC comedy, Outsourced. She is currently staffed on Disney’s Mira, Royal Detective animated series. Geetika had the honor of winning the Writers Guild of America’s Writer Access Project two years in a row, winning in both Comedy and Drama. She is currently developing several TV pilots and stage play.

In 2011,  Jim Schlett "refocused” on his love for the National Parks and photography.   One of his images was displayed in the Art Takes Times Square Exhibition in New York City in June 2012.  Since 2016 he has been selected as the Artist in Resident at the 8 different National Park sites.  In addition to exhibiting his photography at numerous galleries in the Washington DC area, he has also sold many photos from Getty Images.   Since his first two residencies at Dorland was so productive and yet restful, this will be his third residency.

Mike Brosnan is a Los Angeles native and received his BA at Cal State University, Northridge in film with a minor in journalism.  After long stints writing scripts and poetry (he studied under Eloise Klein Healy - named LA’s first Poet Laureate in 2012), he turned his eye towards fiction.  Mike has worked at the UCLA Film and Television Archive and was for a time in the development departments of producer Edward R. Pressman, producer/director Oliver Stone and Miramax.  He is currently employed at The Walt Disney Co.  His essay on Irene Adler, a character found in the Sherlock Holmes canon, can be found in the book, Ladies, Ladies: The Women in the Life of Sherlock Holmes, Aventine Press, 2007.  In addition to his writing and movie industry endeavors, he has been a wine director, wine bar manager and owned his own wine event planning business.  

Edan Lepucki  is the bestselling author of the novels California and Woman No. 17, and she recently contributed the story "There's No Place Like Home" to Warmer, a collection of short stories about climate change. She is currently editing a forthcoming nonfiction book,Mothers Before, which will showcase photographs of women's mothers before they became mothers. 

Shilpa Agarwal is author of the internationally-published novel, Haunting Bombay. She is the host of a forthcoming radio show, set to premiere world-wide in March 2019 and she has been a freelance writer for the forthcoming Disney animated TV show, Mira, Royal Detective. She was featured on the United Nations’ album, Music to Inspire – Artists UNited Against Human Trafficking. She served as Fiction Editor at LA-based, Angels Flight • literary west, a literary and cultural journal focused on Los Angeles and its stories, and a hub of justice, voice, and community. She is currently working on a TV pilot, and on a novel trilogy that reclaims and resurrects the female body.

Julia Mary Gibson grew up by the magical lakes of the North American Midwest, or occupied Anishinaabe territory, where her novel COPPER MAGIC takes place.  She writes about the ways that human civilization intersects with mysterious wild nature and the sacred responsibilities we have to each other and to the planet.  Dorland has been an instrumental element in manifesting her work.  She lives in Hollywood, California, surrounded by her extended family of poets, thespians, dancers, illustrators, filmworkers, and urban farmers. 

Sherri C. Perry​ is the author of Venn, a collection of short stories, Letters to Cadence, Musings of a Modern Grandmother and Slice, a collection of poetry. Her work has been featured in Streetlight Magazine, Tigershark Publishing, GNU Literary Journal, Dragon Poet Review, The Bayou Review, Emerge Magazine and The Storyteller Magazine. Her awards include the Write Partners of North Arkansas Award, Ozark Creative Writers Editor’s Award, Clouse Literary Arts and Theater Award, Saturday Writers Creative Non-Fiction Award, Porter Art Enterprises Award and The Caudle Memorial Award for Excellence in Storytelling. She is the head speech and debate coach at an all-girls college preparatory high school in Houston, Texas.

RESIDENTS: 2019

Auzelle Epeneter  writes on the border between poetry and prose, where she simultaneously creates a personal chronicle and semi-fictional world in which she explores identity, relationships, and experience.  She is currently developing her first collection, which is structured around a search for the “sweet spot” in situations related to power, survival, and knowledge of self.  Her work has been published in ZYZZYVA, Passages North, and Forge, among others.  Auzelle lives in Los Angeles, California.

Barbara DeMarco-Barrett is the founder and host of "Writers on Writing," which airs every Wednesday morning at 9 a.m. PT on KUCI-FM. She's the author of the Los Angeles Times bestseller Pen on Fire: A Busy Woman's Guide to Igniting the Writer Within (Harcourt) and has stories in Orange County Noir and USA Noir: Best of the Akashic Noir Series. She's also written essays and articles for the Los Angeles Times, Poets & Writers, The Writer, Writers' Digest, The Authors Guild Bulletin, Orange Coast magazine, and more. She teaches an online class for Gotham Writers Workshop, and two private workshops in Southern California where she lives with her husband and son, both musicians, and 13 typewriters, and counting.  

Darcy Vebber writes fiction and personal essays. She teaches fiction writing at Art Division, a non profit school for under served young adults, and Writing Workshops L.A. Her work has been published in the Iowa Review, Tribe Magazine, The Jewish Journal and others. She had a BA in Film from USC and an MFA from Otis College of Art and Design.

Nathan Rivera is a native of the Temecula Valley. Writing words and music on the accordion, guitar, voice, piano, what else? Traveling to share the gift of music with those willing to accept it. Spreading positivity and joy one note at a time. 

New Jersey artist Heidi Curko produces non-representational works with masses of dark energetic forms. Ms. Curko has had numerous exhibits from LA to India to New York.

Leïla Rose Willis Receptiveness to the 'impermanence of things' guides Leïla Rose Willis’ workas well as her emotional response to the (Herman Hesse) ideals of 'Sturm und Drang' relationships between landscapes and philosophical thought. By repeating a gesture or motion, her search for a line echoes a language expressing emotion in which the human spirit is represented by its architecture or aftermaths of its actions. Concerned by ecological questions and influenced by Arte Povera she favors the use of natural, light, recyclable, perishable materials such as paper, hair, wood. Her work can be seen as a metaphor for organisms and rhythms that relate to the human scale, specifically the hand - while water, the metabolic element, remains the stream of consciousness materialising her flow of ideas and knowledge. A visual, conversational exchange between multiple layers invites the viewer to find a critical or poetic path between.  

Mary Proenza completed a BA in literature at UCSB’s College of Creative Studies, an MFA in painting at New York Studio School, and an MFA in creative writing at The New School. Her disciplines include painting, drawing, printmaking, and writing—which she’s currently combining in a memoir, part of which was published in Rosebud. Her written art reviews have been published in Art in America and The Brooklyn Rail, and her visual art appears on the covers of books from John Daniel & Co. and CDs from CMH and Arhoolie. She has received residency grants from the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Jentel Foundation, Springboard for the Arts, Helene Wurlitzer Foundation of New Mexico, and New York Mills Cultural Center. In 2017, she joined the full-time art faculty at Marymount University, Arlington, VA.

Frank Horvat is an accomplished multi-genre composer and pianist who has made the tricky musical leap that allows him to pursue a niche of his own (Edmonton Journal). His music is emotional and intense. One of the most inventive songwriters to come out of the contemporary scene in Canada (WholeNote Magazine), with premieres on four continents; he explores a wide array of themes in his music from love to social justice issues. With a continuously growing discography, his compositions have been featured in plays, films and on TV and radio networks internationally. 

Thomas Dougherty  (b.1990) is a native of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and is a composer of orchestral, chamber, and solo works.  Over the past several years, Tommy’s music has been performed by Modern Violin Ensemble, Alarm Will Sound, the Aspen Contemporary Ensemble, Aspen Conducting Academy Orchestra, Kinetic: The Conductorless Ensemble, the Shepherd School Symphony Orchestra, and the Eastman Philharmonia.  In 2016 and 2017, Tommy was a recipient of two ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composers Awards.  Also an active violinist, Tommy is a substitute violinist with the San Diego Symphony. You can hear more here.

WickiVanDeVeer is a painter who lives in Hanalei, Hawaii and Fallbrook California. Her paintings in oil, encaustic and watercolor are available for viewing at her website: wicki-van-de-veer.pixels.com. They are inspired by travels in Nepal, Japan and Tibet as well as by the rich cultural life and landscapes of the island of Kaua'i. Wicki also teaches painting and drawing to adults and children. Her  residency in 2019 will be devoted to developing a series of drawings and poems. 


San Diego Symphony Orchestra violinist Kate Hatmaker enjoys a varied career as
performer, educator and entrepreneur. She is the cofounder and Executive Director of Art of Élan, a San Diego chamber music organization committed to bringing classical music to diverse audiences, and has been a violinist with the Symphony since 2006. Ms. Hatmaker has played with a wide variety of American orchestras, including the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra and the New World Symphony, and she has also performed at the Breckenridge Music Festival, the Vail International Dance Festival, and La Jolla Music Society’s SummerFest. She completed her Master of Music degree at Carnegie Mellon University and her undergraduate training at both the University of Iowa and the Sorbonne University in Paris, France, graduating Phi Beta Kappa with high honors and degrees in both Political Science and French.

Additional January-March 2019 Residents

Molly Reid

Kristen Daniels

Suzanne Boyle

​Christoph Sturm-Singer/composer​​

Michael Jon Fink is a composer/performer who resides in the San Fernando Valley just north of Los Angeles. For over thirty years he has served on the faculty of the Herb Albert School of Music at the California Institute of the Arts where he teaches Composition, Orchestration and Analysis. He has composed concertos for soprano saxophone, bass clarinet, violin and cello as well as incidental music for two plays by W.B. Yeats and four by Wajdi Mouawad. M.J.F. is a member of experimental and new music groups that have included the Negative Band, Musica Veneris Nocturnus, Stillife and Ghost Duo; and currently plays electric guitar with the Feedback Wave Riders (Free Improv), Trio Through the Looking-Glass (Jazz-inflected) and Spectral Dawn Spirits (Hierophanic, somewhat metallic, post-psychedelic ambient instrumental music). His music appears on the Cold Blue, Contagion, C.R.I., Trance Port, Raptoria Caam and Wire Tapper labels.

Sharon OBrien teaches creative writing and American Studies at Dickinson College in Carlisle, PA.  She has long been drawn to life stories and the process of storytelling.  Her first book was a biography of Willa Cather (Willa Cather: The Emerging Voice, 1987) that was the first to explore this writer’s life from a feminist point of view.  Her second book, The Family Silver (2004) was a memoir of family and depression that explored the concept of inheritance in a cultural context.  Recently she has been writing personal essays that address such topics as the American cult of productivity, the politics of the food industry, and American attitudes toward grief.  She is working on an academic memoir that explores how academic writing is shaped by history and politics.

Victoria Malawey is a composer, singer-songwriter, and scholar based in the Twin Cities and has written music for mixed chamber and vocal ensembles, which have been performed worldwide. Her song cycle Chansons Innocentes, was the 2017 winner of the International Alliance of Women in Music New Music Competition Patsy Lu Prize, and her Miniatures for solo piano was the second place winner of the 2016 New Ariel Piano Composition Competition. Recent commissions include pieces for the William Ferris Chorale, Open House Chicago, the Black Cedar Ensemble, the ARK Trio, soprano Emma Rose Lynn, and soprano Bethany Battafarano.


Composer Dale Trumbore has been called “a rising star among modern choral composers” (AXS), and her works have been praised for their “soaring melodies and beguiling harmonies” (The New York Times). Trumbore's music has been commissioned and performed by organizations including the Los Angeles Master Chorale, Los Angeles Children's Chorus, Northwest Symphony Orchestra, Pasadena Symphony, and The Singers – Minnesota Choral Artists, among many others. Recently, Choral Arts Initiative released How to Go On, an album devoted entirely to Trumbore's choral works, which was a #4-bestselling Classical album on iTunes. Trumbore's compositions are available from Boosey & Hawkes, G. Schirmer, and MusicSpoke. Hear her music at daletrumbore.com

Natalie Smith Parra’s creative nonfiction has appeared in Creative Nonfiction, Calyx, and The Mommy Wars, a Random House anthology, and Dove Tales. She has been awarded residencies at Hedgebrook, Norcroft, Mesa Refuge, and Wellstone, as well as a Barbara Deming Money for Women grant and a Puffin Artist’s grant. She is a native of Los Angeles, where she worked as a high school teacher of English and Spanish, and is a lifelong activist, most recently working in the field of prisoner civil rights. ‪She is currently working on a short story collection about women and their relationship to the prison and legal systems.

Bruce Trinkley taught composition and orchestration and conducted the Penn State Glee Club from 1970 to 2006, and was music director for Penn State's Centre Stage from 1970 until 1995. He received degrees in composition from Columbia University where he studied with Otto Luening, Jack Beeson and Charles Wuorinen. Professor Trinkley's music has been performed in the United States, Europe, Australia, South America and China

Recent works include The Last Voyage of Captain Meriwether Lewis, a cantata for men's voices; One Life: The Rachel Carson Project, a multi-media work for women’s chorus, soloists, and instrumental ensemble; and York: the Voice of Freedom, a music drama about the life of the only African American on the Lewis and Clark Expedition. His operas for young people include The Prairie Dog That Met the President and Chicken Little.

Violinist Jeff Thayer is currently the concertmaster of the San Diego Symphony as well as concertmaster and faculty member of the Music Academy of the West (Santa Barbara). Previous positions include assistant concertmaster of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, associate concertmaster of the North Carolina Symphony, and concertmaster of the Canton (OH) Symphony Orchestra. He is a graduate of the Cleveland Institute of Music, the Eastman School of Music, and the Juilliard School Pre-College Division. His teachers include William Preucil, Donald Weilerstein, Zvi Zeitlin, and Dorothy DeLay.  Awards include the Stephen Hahn/Lillybelle Foundation Award in Violin from the Music Academy of the West, the Starling Foundation Award, the George Eastman Scholarship, and the Performer's Certificate from the Eastman School of Music.

Kimberly Strouse was born and raised in Baltimore, Maryland where she attended Notre Dame Preparatory School and danced at The Peabody Institute of The Johns Hopkins University. She received her BFA in Drama from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, her MFA in Film/Video from California Institute of the Arts and completed the Chef's Training Program at Natural Gourmet Institute for Health and Culinary Arts. At the age of twenty-four, Ms. Strouse founded and directed Rita Project, a non-profit arts organization that
engaged diverse populations in permanent and site-specific Open Art Studios in New York City, Los Angeles and Baltimore from 2001-2014. Presently, she lives in Los Angeles, California where she is the Research and Development Innovation Cook at Beyond Meat, a Freelance Food Stylist, most recently for the HBO television series Westworld and Personal Chef to Kevin Olusola.

Jennifer Vandever is an author and screenwriter living in Los Angeles where she teaches at Emerson College.  She is the author of the novels THE BRONTE PROJECT and AMERICAN TANGO and was the co-screenwriter and associate producer of the film JUST ONE TIME.  Her work has appeared in First City, Redbook, The New York Times and The Village Voice.

​​Sakae Manning’s storytelling strives to give voice to women who defy cultural, racial, and gender norms. Her work typically blends race and identity, creating alliances and solidarity amongst women of color. A Mills College graduate, Manning’s poem, December Baby, was published in the College literary journal. Other writing credits include Okasan/Mother, published in Making Waves: An Anthology of Asian-American Women Writers and Sammy’s Shitkickers published in The Salt River Review. She received honorable mention in the 2018 Carve Magazine Prose and Poetry Contest for The Button Maker’s House, scheduled for publication in spring 2019. In 2017, Manning was writer-in-residence at The Annenberg Community Beach House where she developed public programs focused on building community and expanding audience for women writers of color. She has been awarded a 2019 Summer Fishtrap Writing Fellowship, is a 2019 returning resident at the Dorland Mountain Arts Colony, and is currently working on a novel, Kimono Blues.

Sarah Gorham has been an active educator and artist for 30 years exploring painting and mixed media work not only as a means towards a likeness of nature, but also as a path to discovering a new way of looking at landscapes and its’ relationship to self. In her work she seeks to capture an extreme moment of solitude and quiet, hoping to find and depict the energy of a single moment of time, or emotion in her work. She investigates this stillness, this peace, this mindufulness in her landscapes, seascapes, sky paintings and her mixed media encaustic constructions. 

Ellen Ancui is a playwright, screenwriter, memoirist, journalist, and performer. A native New Yorker, Ellen transplanted to Los Angeles twenty years ago to write for the sitcom, Malcolm and Eddie. In 2018 Ellen was hired to write a feature screenplay for Independent Media. Prior to that she wrote and performed, "I Hope You Have a Daughter Just Like You!" for the Listen to Your Mother Series. Her piece, "My Story of David" has been performed all over California over the last four years by the Jewish Women's Theater. Theatrical productions of her plays in LA include, Glory Pie at the Coronet Theater, Y2FU at Theater/Theatre and her one woman show, Jumping off the Fridge at the HBO Workspace. In NY her solo shows were produced at The Public Theater, The Knitting Factory, Dixon Place and Solo Arts Group (which she founded in 1994) and around the world at The Edinburgh Theater Festival and at London’s Camden Studio Theater. Ellen has been published in print in American Theater Magazine, Maxim, The Boston Phoenix and in numerous online magazines. She is the recipient of grants from the Joyce Mertz-Gilmore Foundation and the Massachusetts Council of the Arts as well as commissions from the Arts Council of Princeton and the Women’s Center of Princeton University. She is currently working on Passover Play, a traumedy in four parts, and Silicon Girls, a comedic screenplay

Amanda L. Andrei hails from Virginia/Washington DC. Her work has been read and/or developed by Playwrights Arena, La MaMa, Son of Semele, La-Ti-Do, Georgetown University, College of William and Mary, and others. She has taught playwriting and creative writing to high schoolers, artists, and engineers across the country and online. She is a member of Playground LA’s 2018-19 Writers Pool and a proud alum of VONA and Atlantic Center for the Arts. She has a BA from the College of William & Mary, an MA from Georgetown University, and is currently pursuing her MFA in Dramatic Writing at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.

Natasha Harrison uses glass as a medium to express feelings about fear, fragility and intensity present within relationships. She is also the Executive Director of the Norman Bird Sanctuary in Paradise Valley, Middletown, Rhode Island. 

Donna Spruijt-Metz is a poet, translator, and Professor of Psychology and Preventive Medicine at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. Her first career was as a professional flutist. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in venues such as the Los Angeles Review, American Journal of Poetry, Naugatuck River Review, Poets Reading the News, and Poetry Northwest. Her poem Tiny Hammers won Third Place in the Beullah Rose Poetry Prize (Smartish Place). Her chapbook, Slippery Surfaces was published by Finishing Line Press in March of 2019. She gets restless. 

Peter Liashkov is born of Russian parents in France in 1939, and raised in Argentina, Liashkov immigrated to Los Angeles in 1955 where he studied Slavic languages at the University of California and completed his MFA at Otis Art Institute in 1967.  Since then Liashkov has been a practicing artist in the Los Angeles area. He is Professor Emeritus at Art Center College of Design where he has taught since 1975. He continues to teach in the Los Angeles area.
Peter's work is found in numerous private and public collections: San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art, Brooklyn Museum, University of California, Santa Barbara, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, UCLA Grunwald Center for the Graphic Arts, San Francisco Museum of Art, Riverside Museum of Art, Laguna Beach Museum, Cleveland Center of Contemporary Art, Marble Palace St. Petersburg, Russia, Fukuoka Asian Art Museum Japan, and Centro Cultural San Angel Mexico.

Tony Eprile is a South African writer & photographer now living in Vermont. His novel, The Persistence of Memory, was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, longlisted for the Dublin Impac Prize, and won the Koret International Jewish Book Award for Fiction. His writing has appeared in O Magazine, The New York Times, Details, The Nation, Gourmet, and the Washington Post. His photographs have appeared in Discover Magazine, The Christian Science Monitor, National Geographic (online), Gourmet, Pacific Standard, and elsewhere. Awards include National Endowment for the Arts, Ingram Merrill Foundation, Djerassi Foundation, MacDowell Colony and other fellowships.

Tony has lectured on observation and creativity at the University of Iowa, Lesley University, the International Visual Literacy Association, the Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference, Bar-Ilan University and a variety of other institutions worldwide.

Born in St. Catharines, Ontario, Frances Greenslade has since lived in Winnipeg, Regina, Vancouver, Chilliwack and Penticton, BC. She has a BA in English from the University of Winnipeg and an MFA in Creative Writing from University of British Columbia. By the Secret Ladder and A Pilgrim in Ireland (Penguin) are her first two books, both memoir. Her novel, Shelter, was published in Canada by Random House in 2011, in the US by Free Press and the UK by Virago in 2012. It has been translated into Dutch, German and Italian. She has taught English and Creative writing at Okanagan College since 2005.

Anthony Swofford is the author of the critically acclaimed war memoir Jarhead and two other books, a novel and a memoir. He is currently completing a biography of the Boston Marathon bombing hero Carlos Arredondo (forthcoming in 2020 from Knopf). He often writes about war, family, and public service and sacrifice. For HBO Films he has adapted his Arredondo book into a feature film. Swofford’s next book will be a novel about the scourge of white supremacism and domestic terror in the U.S. he has published numerous reviews, essays, and opinion pieces in The New York Times, Harper’s, Tin House and elsewhere. He has taught creative writing at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, West Virginia University, and Lewis and Clark College. 

Additional April-June 2019 Residents​​

Molly Jordan Koch -writer

Wendy Adamson writer

Janne (pronounced Yana) Larsen is an artist and educator based in Los Angeles. After graduated from CalArts in 2007 with an MFA in Set Design, Janne has designed sets in Los Angeles and New York. Usingthis theatricality she began to branch out into Mixed media installations and creating dining experiences with her food as art
collective, 'Inner Dinner'. Janne's work has been seen recently in
'Dogumenta', an art show for our canine friends. Janne's work has
been seen at EXLA, Elephant art space, LA County Store, Symphony Space
and Bootleg Theater, to name a few.

Matthew Goldman is a dual degree MFA/MA student and associate professor at Chapman University. As the program's "cruise director," he plans fun events and makes sure people show up to them. Matthew is the co-editor in chief of Chapman's graduate run literary journal, Anastamos, and co-founder of the "Write to Read" community reading series. In his free time, he volunteers at a local nonprofit where he teaches writing skills to people in recovery from mental illness. Matthew lives in Orange, California with his pitbull, Rocko.

Adeola Davies-Aiyeloja is self-taught artist with no formal training in art, Adeola has a way of bringing colors together to create a visual sensation. When you look at my paintings, you feel the joy and happiness the colors convey, Adeola said. Adeola is very aware of colors and forms and how they work to captivate her audience. She has exhibited at local and National juried shows and also served as juror for local art competitions. Adeola is proud of her involvement with the African American Summerfest from 1992-1998 special youth exhibition called, “Tomorrow’s Masters” which honors youths from kindergarten through 12th grades. She was a member of the task force committee in formulating the County Cultural Plan for the County of San Bernardino. Her work is in both public and private collection, such as Toni Morrison, Riverside Art Museum, Chaffey Community Museum of Art, National Orange Show, Loma Linda Ronald McDonald House and many more.

A graduate student at Chapman University, Sam Risak is currently writing a fabulist short-story collection that explores how anxiety manifests through the body for her MFA thesis. At the same time, she is writing her English MA thesis in which she discusses what we can learn about science communication through Japanese folklore and the recent online “Momo” phenomenon. A graduate from the University of South Florida, she holds a BA in Creative Writing and a BA in Women’s and Gender Studies, and in the past year has worked as a research and teaching assistant for Chapman professors in both Journalism and Rhetoric fields. Currently, she is a Writing Assistant at Chapman where she helps graduate students in other—predominantly science-driven—disciplines learn how to better communicate themselves in their dissertations and theses. In Fall 2019, Sam will be an instructor for the English composition course Writing About Horror.

Elissa Lieberman is a San Diego Based painter and owner of the San Diego Art Loft, a teaching studio in San Diego. Elissa received her M.F.A from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2002. She taught painting, drawing, and design at many colleges and universities as well as local studios and ateliers. Elissa managed the Art School for the San Diego Museum of Art in 2007/2008. Elissa opened the San Diego Art loft in 2015. A solo project, it was nominated in the top 5 art schools in San Diego by San Diego City Beat Magazine. Elissa’s paintings and drawings are loosely autobiographical. Her writing practice informs contemporary narratives and portraiture that offer her a subject matter that connects deeply with viewers. 

Lucy Torres is a writer & artist based in NYC & author of The Taste of Broken, an autobiographical poetry book on illness turned NYC experimental art show. Lucy is a LaGuardia Performing Arts Center LAB 101 Grantee & has featured at the Inspired Word Series, Queens Literary Festival, International Women’s Artist Salon & Local Project. As an endometriosis sufferer, Lucy is an unwavering women’s rights activist, fighter of self-love & advocate for gender/racial/(dis)ability/class/age/body size equality. 

Scott Daughtridge DeMer is a fiction writer from Atlanta, Georgia. His work has been featured in Necessary Fiction, Midwestern Gothic, The Fanzine, Everyday Genius, and other places. He is an Idea Capital grant recipient and a Hambidge Center fellow. He currently studies writing at Arizona State University. 

For the past 20 years, Scott Ibex has entertained prestigious audiences at Opera Houses, Events Centers, Colleges, Museums, International Film Festivals, and famous venues throughout the world. The result of his labors has brought critical artistic acclaim. His skills include performing, composing, arranging, recording, producing, teaching,  and professional accompaniment on guitar & piano. 

Mailing address: P.O. Box 6, Temecula, CA 92593  ~  Physical Address: 36701 Highway 79 South, Temecula, CA 92592
(951) 302-3837 ~ www.dorlandartscolony.org ~ info@dorlandartscolony.org
A California 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization

Author Beverly Oliver is a professional freelance proofreader and editor, serving clients in Los Angeles and Orange counties. She is the author of three books, Sojourn to Honduras Sojourn to Healing, Seven Days in Usha Village, and Sojourn to Healthy Eating: Tasty Alkaline & Vegetarian Recipes. She is a graduate of Howard University and successfully completed the UCLA Public Relations Certificate Program.

Sam Waldner is a mixed-media artist who combines digital photography and acrylic painting to achieve multidimensional pieces of work. The work tends to fall into the abstract/surrealism genres. Sam has had a need to express himself artistically since childhood and trained at OCA and had a residency at Atelier 
de Séguret in Provence. He now works as a psychotherapist and addictions counsellor in Toronto and uses thse pivotal artistic experiences in his practice, and consequentially, uses elements and philosophies from his practice in his artwork. The artwork Sam creates is about transmutability, about being able to adapt and change and not being focused and stuck on any given outcome. Things may not work out exactly the way that you want them to and by being flexible and by being adaptable, the art never needs to be only one thing. It’s in constant flux, it’s on a continuum. The art is the journey, not the destination. 

Shannon Fandler is a writer based in the Philadelphia area. Her work has most recently appeared in The Rumpus, Catapult, Vela, and Apiary, among other publications. Shannon was a 2017 Edward F. Albee fellow. She is a graduate of the MFA in Creative Nonfiction program at Rutgers University - Camden.  


 Renie Oxley is a Los Angeles based writer.  She holds a Juris Doctorate from the University of Detroit School of Law and was a fellow at the MacDowell Colony and Dorland Arts Colony.  She wrote and directed several award-winning films that premiered around the world.  She now focuses her time on writing stories for young adults.

For many years SteveLautermilch has worked in the American deserts and along the Pacific Rim, exploring the sites and landscapes of the first peoples. Figures for a Family Portrait (2018) won the Bright Hill Press Poetry Book Award. Rim (2010) won the Sow’s Ear Poetry Press Chapbook Award and received the Jean Pedrick Award from the New England Poetry Club. New poems have received first prizes from the W. B. Yeats Society of New York, the Muriel Craft Bailey Award from The Comstock Review, and the Daniel Varoujan Prize from the New England Poetry Club. His photographs have been shown at the Getchell Library Gallery of the University of Nevada, Reno, the Festival Park Gallery on Roanoke Island in Manteo, North Carolina, and appear as covers for Cimarron Review, The Comstock Review, and CrossCurrents. 

Critically acclaimed for his unique orchestrations and “rich sonic palette,” Mike Wojniak is a prolific songwriter who began writing for his first band when he was 14 and hasn’t stopped since. His fourth full length album, Ad Astra (2017), includes a wide variety of instrumentation including viola, cello, flute, trombone, piano, synthesizers and guitars. Prior to this album, Mike released three full-length albums independently, Followthe Crane (2008), Memento Vivere (2010), and Libero (2012); as well as a 4-song EP, Anima Mundi (2014) with the San Diego-based record label, Golden Wave Records.  Mike’s latest single, Sail Away, has been praised by critics as a “masterful” composition that is “elegant” and “perfectly balanced” with “positively haunting” vocals and “sweeping cello notes.”  He will be releasing a new solo album in 2019 along with a full band album under the name Star Halo.

April-June 2019 Residents

Dr. Deborah Mindry is an anthropologist born in Cape Town and raised in Durban, South Africa. Since January 1990 she has resided in Altadena, CA with her husband and daughter. She travels regularly to Durban to conduct research and to see her family. She is working on a book manuscript, “I am HIV: Ordinary people daring to live and make change in South Africa” which challenges conceptions of Africans as victims of HIV and examines the complex realities of people living with HIV, their determination to survive and to make change in their communities. She is a founding member of the UC Women’s Health Gender and Empowerment Center of Expertise and conducts research on gender, HIV, and reproductive health in Malawi, Uganda, South Africa, and Rwanda. Her work has been published in Culture, Health and Sexuality; International Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health; AIDS and Behavior; among others.

October - December 2019 Residents

July-September 2019 Residents

Anna Leahy is the author of the nonfiction book Tumor and the poetry collections Aperture and Constituents of Matter and the co-author of Generation Space: A Love Story, Conversing with Cancer, and What We Talk about When We Talk about Creative Writing. Her essays have appeared at The Atlantic, Pop Sugar, The Southern Review, The Pinch, and elsewhere and won the top awards from Ninth Letter and Dogwood in 2016. She directs the MFA program at Chapman University, where she edits the international journal TAB and curates the Tabula Poetica reading series. Read Anna's latest book review in Entropy here.

Tammy Harris is an artist at heart, only lacking a few credits towards an art major in addition to her masters in special education. She is a prolific writer, artist, and photographer. Her passion for using her expertise to help others led her to create a thriving blog called TammysTeachings.com. Tammy will use this plethora of writing as a stepping stone towards her dream of authoring a book that will serve as a resource for parents and teachers throughout their journey of raising successful children.

Sheryl A. Stradlingis an award-winning author and artist. She is passionate about igniting personal growth through changing generational family patterns. She was inspired to write her family saga by her desire to heal lingering family issues. In the process, she uncovered the spiritual gifts of five generations of women who transformed their challenges into opportunities. She is the author of Faith, Power, Joy: Spiritual Guidance from 5 Generations of Remarkable Women, and a contributor to Journey of an Empath, a compilation of transformational stories from empaths worldwide. She is also a mixed-media, non-representational artist. Her work is process-oriented and primarily intuitive. She shows her work in the Phoenix AZ metro area

Vince Montague is an artist and writer. He earned his B.A. from UCLA and his M.A. from New York University. He is an exhibiting artist at ACCI Gallery in Berkeley, CA, and a member of the artist collective The Oakland Museum of Ceramics. Recent solo exhibitions include THE WHALE SHOW, October 2018, at The Red Metal Barn. His sculpture was recently juried into The Crocker Kingsley Show, 2019, Sacramento, CA, and UnWedged 2018, Seattle, Washington. His poetry and short stories appear in literary magazines across the country. He lives in Northern California.

January-March 2019 Residents

Krista Nyberg is a multi-disciplinary Art and Creative Director working with an international client base mainly in the U.K., the U.S., and Sweden. Her international work has included extensive client-facing experience with high-profile accounts, practicing 360 degree approaches from strategy and initial concepts through to design and execution. Clients include The Guardian, Working Title, Old Vic, Åhléns Klubb, V&A, AKA (UK & NYC) and Vogue UK. Since 2015 she has been based in Stockholm, Sweden as Head of Brand Creative within the Global Marketing Department at the American sportswear and lifestyle brand GANT. With a multi-cultural design background, Krista takes a diverse stylistic approach to technique and material, allowing innovative and original work.

Bettye Barclay is a multi-media artist who during the last 30 years has created with clay, fused glass and paintings. Paintings have been in watercolor and acrylic as well as mixed media.
 Her artistic work was influenced by her work as a psychotherapist and she often used her creative work as a visual expression of the various aspects of life that are constantly in flux. This was especially so in her Seasons of the Heart series as a way of expressing the experience of joy and pain in our heart connections. Her creations are in collections in the United States, Hong Kong, Australia and Korea. She has participated in solo and group exhibits locally and with clay in other parts of the US. She has received awards both locally and nationally.

Jamie Mayer is a writer/director who has worked in a wide range of formats, including features, television, gaming & digital. As a feature screenwriter, she's sold spec scripts, been hired to write original material & adaptations, and had feature scripts optioned by Fox, Lionsgate, & numerous independent producers. She has also optioned television pilots to Will Smith’s Overbrook Entertainment & Pearl Transmedia. She was Supervising Producer/Co-Head Writer for A&E/Lifetime's narrative romance platform Fall Into Me, writing two of the project's seven stand-alone series, and co-producing them all. Jamie recently directed the short film Crowbar Smile for Jon Avnet & Rodrigo Garcia’s Indigenous Media, which was released by Condé Nast. She previously workshopped feature drama Painless at the Sundance Writers' & Directors' Labs, where she directed Elisabeth Moss, Vincent Kartheiser & Lisa Edelstein. She subsequently reimagined Painless as a YA novel, which was published in 2017. She also recently worked as Senior Game Writer for Chinese gaming giant Kunlun, hiring and running a writers' room for a new narrative game. Jamie graduated magna cum laude in visual arts from Harvard University.

Melanie Bishop is Faculty Emeritus at Prescott College in Arizona, where for 22 years, she taught creative writing, and was Founding Editor, and Fiction/Nonfiction Editor of Alligator Juniper, a national literary magazine, three-time winner of the AWP Directors’ Prize. Her young adult novel, My So-Called Ruined Life (2014) was a top-five finalist for both the John Gardner Award in Fiction and CLMP’s Firecracker Awards. Bishop has published fiction and nonfiction in The New York Times, Glimmer Train, Georgetown Review, Greensboro Review, Florida Review, Vela, Essay Daily, Carmel Magazine, Huffington Post, New York Journal of Books, and Family Circle. A short story, “Friday Night in America,” is being adapted for the stage as a monologue, premiering in 2019 in Orlando, by Beth Marshall Presents. All online publications can be accessed here.

Patsy Creedy is a native Californian who lives and works in San Francisco. She received an MA and an MFA in creative writing from San Francisco State. She recently completed a memoir, The Blue Valiant. She has published poetry in Transfer 110 and 112 and was awarded their Mark Linenthal prize for poetry. She has also published poetry in Dragon’s Leap and Inlandia. She published a nonfiction piece, The Stud in a San Francisco Anthology and was awarded an honorable mention for a flash fiction piece, Burger, in Glimmertrain magazine. She was accepted to the Dairy Hollow Writer’s Residency 2019. She has been a member of the San Francisco Zen Center since 2000 and she co-leads a writer’s retreat several times a year, Writing the Way, with her teacher Laura Burges.

Shine Delphi - travels this world with a resonator guitar and a few words to share. Born in Pennsylvania, raised in California, and rebirthed in the crescent city of New Orleans. Shine is a performer that will leave you feeling good and wanting more. From his technical ability on the guitar to his simple yet touching lyrics, he is an act that spans many genres and all ages. He has opened for such bands as The Carolina Chocolate drops, Reverend Peyton's big damn band, and The Tony Rice unit just to name a few. Oh yeah, and there's also that laugh... you can't forget that! HA!

Steven Morris is an author, artist, consultant, and speaker. Much of his consultancy work is centered around evolving business to be more conscious in their culture and brand. He is a TEDx speaker on The Beautiful Business and author of two books, writer for many publications, and advisor to businesses that include the Port of San Diego, Sony, Samsung, Habitat for Humanity, and more than 200 others.

As an artist, Steven is an American figurative abstract painter. His paintings fall within the lineage of the New York School of Abstract Expressionist and European Surrealist painters. His works celebrate the human mysteries of belonging, separation, and the relationship to the natural world. He has been honored with more than 20 gallery shows in the past 3 years and his work was honored with First Prize in the “Connections” Juried Exhibit through the San Diego Museum of Art, Artist Guild.

Marissa Candy Raigoza's secret identity is that of a self-described wild writer.  She can't pick just one genre so she writes a little bit of everything-poetry, plays, essays, and detentions. Her full-time identity is that of a teacher for both high school and college students, so she doesn't have much quiet time to write. Luckily,  a residency at Dorland brought her out of writing retirement in 2016 and she likes to return there where she sips wine with her imaginary friends who encourage her to "write this down!"  Her latest accomplishments are completing and submitting a chapbook of her poetry titled A Pocket Full of Love, Hope, and Madness to a press that she admires and she read for Fresno's LitHop this past April. 

Douglas DeChow is the co-author of Generation Space: A Love Story and The Craft of Librarian Instruction and the co-editor of Intertwingled: The Life and Influence of Ted Nelson. His writing has appeared at The Atlantic, Scientific American, The Post Game, Fifth Wednesday Journal, Curator, and others. He is the Digital Humanities and Science Librarian at Chapman University, the Curator of the Boisjoly Challenger Disaster Collection, and actively involved in the Center for American War Letters. 

AletaBarthell (playwright) was a finalist for the 2016 HUMANITAS/CTG Playwriting Prize for her play, WINDOW OF SHAME.  She is currently developing a television series about the 12th century queen, Eleanor of Aquitaine, for which she received a grant to study source material in Paris through the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs.  She is a teaching artist with Playwrights Project and founder of the youth theater education program, Kids Act, at New Village Arts Theatre. She holds a B.S. from Northwestern University (Evanston, IL) and has trained at BADA (Oxford, England); Shakespeare and Company (Lenox, MA). She studied playwriting and screenwriting at UCSD with Allan Havis.  Associate member Dramatists Guild. Member SAG/AFTRA. 

Carlos Holguin Originally from Los Angeles, California, Carlos Holguin eats, sleeps, and breathes music.  He has an Associate’s Degree in Psychology, and one in Music from the College of Southern Nevada.  He also has a Bachelor of Music Degree in Jazz Studies-Bass from the University of Nevada Las Vegas.  Though he’s an in-demand bass player (both electric and upright), he also loves playing ballads in Spanish with his guitar.  On any given night he can be found playing jazz, pop, or funk music in a casino lounge or show and/or playing Mexican norteño music at a concert or private event.  With extensive experience playing a variety of styles of music like country, blues, funk, jazz and so much more, he has played in various bands as well as major production shows on the famous Las Vegas strip.  His intention is to spread joy and love through music.  

Erin Schalk is a visual artist, writer, and educator who lives in the greater Los Angeles area.  She graduated with her MFA in Studio from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2017, and she has exhibited her art throughout the United States and in Japan.  Her work has also been published in a variety of journals; highlights include The Tishman Review, The Woven Tale Press, Parentheses International Literary Journal, and Balloons Literary Journal — a publication based out of the University of Hong Kong.  Today, Schalk is in charge of the arts education program and teaches art to blind and visually impaired students at the Braille Institute of America in Anaheim, a non-profit organization. 

 

Brad Betts has been an artist for over 25 years and is a Signature Member of the American Society of Marine Artists (ASMA). His paintings have appeared in solo and group shows throughout New England, including the Mystic Seaport Gallery’s acclaimed “International Marine Art Exhibition” for over 10 years. In 2006, he received the “Maritime Gallery Yachting Award” and in 2017, Brad received the “Award of Excellence” at this juried exhibition. 

A native of the Washington, D.C. area, D. Gause currently resides in Las Vegas. Performer, composer, educator, writer, consultant, advocate, grant writer, coach are some words to describe her 
daily work. In her spare time, she reads, cooks, bakes, and volunteers.

“I am a sphere, not a slice.” ~D.G.

Monica J. Brown is an interdisciplinary artist exploring the intersections between visual art, sound, movement, poetry, prose and performance. Her visual art has been exhibited widely throughout Chicago, including the DuSable Museum, the Museum of Science and Industry, and the Hyde Park Art Center. She has also exhibited nationally and internationally including Juijiang University in Jiujiang, China. She created two murals with the Hubbard Street Mural Project in Chicago, and her artwork was published in Woman Made Gallery's Her Mark: a journal of art + poetry 2009. She has been the recipient of the Weisman Award, the City of Chicago DCASE Grant and Illinois Arts Council's Grants. Monica has performed at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Prop Theatre in Chicago; and the Bucktown Center for the Arts in Davenport, IA.